[New treatments in brain tumors]

The current situation of the treatment of cerebral tumors in Spain may be summarized in two events: a) most neurologists do not participate in the management of cerebral tumors, and b) the treatment of cerebral tumors, as a multidisciplinary activity requiring the coordinated work of different specialists and which integrates all the needs of the patient, remains far from being carried out in our hospitals. Only the creation of competitive highly qualified, multidisciplinary groups including a reasonable number of hospitals will allow reaching the new challenges in the treatment of cerebral tumors present to be rapidly and successfully undertaken in a medium term. These challenges may be summarized as follows: a) the design of less neurotoxic and more effective protocols for chemosensitive tumors (lymphomas, meduloblastomas, germinomas and anaplastic oligodendrogliomas), b) the development of better response evaluation techniques, and c) the identification of subgroups of more homogeneous tumors within the malignant gliomas defined by molecular alterations which confers them a prognosis similar to the treated studied.